"So what?" HELLO! Kamala Harris is on her way to winning in 2024! The economy is strong and America needs a moral leader

‘So what’: Two words that best sum up the nature of Donald Trump
Echo opinion published in The Washington Post (Democracy Dies in Darkness) by columnist Eugene Robinson.

Donald Trump’s alleged January 6th response related to Mike Pence is damning.

With a month to go until the election, voters have been given the perfect distillation of the myriad reasons Donald Trump must never again be president: “So what❓”

That is what Trump said during the shocking and bloody Capitol insurrection on Jan. 6, 2021, when told his vice president was being hustled to safety, according to court papers filed Wednesday by special counsel Jack Smith. So what if the rioters were chanting “hang Mike Pence” as they stalked the halls? 

So what if the mob beat and trampled scores of police officers and forced members of Congress to flee for their lives?

Any decent human being would have been alarmed, or at least concerned. But according to the court filing, Trump’s display of callousness came just minutes after he had egged the mob on, declaring in a tweet that “Mike Pence didn’t have the courage to do what should have been done.”

What Trump wanted Pence to do was refuse to certify Joe Biden’s victory in the 2020, election. For the first time in our nation’s history, a president refused to accept the decision of the voters, refused to honor dozens of court rulings confirming his defeat, and for hours refused to lift a finger while a mob of his supporters sacked the Capitol. If this alone does not disqualify Trump from ever again being president, what is wrong with us?

And what is wrong with Trump’s running mate, JD Vance? Does he think Americans are so stupid that they’ll believe him when he says, with Ivy League smoothness and a practiced tone of faux sincerity, that up is down?

“It’s really rich for Democratic leaders to say that Donald Trump is a unique threat to democracy when he peacefully gave over power on Jan. 20,” the senator from Ohio claimed during the vice-presidential debate Tuesday night, earning himself a chapter in the annals of disingenuousness.

Yes, thankfully, the inauguration of Biden and Vice President Kamala Harris was peaceful — but Trump never “gave over” anything, since he had already absconded to his Florida estate (taking boxes of highly classified documents with him). Trump was the first modern president to snub his successor’s swearing-in, another departure from our democratic traditions.

To this day, neither Trump nor Vance will forthrightly acknowledge that Trump lost the 2020 election. And to this day, Trump will not commit to accepting defeat if — hopefully, when — Harris beats him on Election Day.

“So what❓” That has been Trump’s one constant policy position, his North Star: Nothing really matters. He was for abortion rights his whole life, but to win a Republican nomination he had to be antiabortion, so he changed. But then the Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade, thanks to the three justices he appointed, and he saw how unpopular the ruling was, and so now he shifts back and forth on the issue, depending on the audience.

“EVERYONE KNOWS I WOULD NOT SUPPORT A FEDERAL ABORTION BAN, UNDER ANY CIRCUMSTANCES, AND WOULD, IN FACT, VETO IT,”  🤥😖😡Trump announced this week on social media. This might come as a surprise to antiabortion activists who are counting on a second Trump administration to somehow stop the wave of state-level voter referendums that are guaranteeing the right to an abortion. But so what? Trump will surely tell those activists a different story.

So what if Trump was convicted on 34 felony counts by a New York jury? So what if the charges — falsification of business records — stemmed from the way he illegally disguised the payment of $130,000 in hush money to an adult-film actress for keeping quiet about her sexual liaison with Trump? Who cares?

So what if Trump spent a year obstructing attempts by the National Archives to retrieve the classified documents he took with him to Mar-a-Lago? So what if he kept this sensitive material in a gaudy ballroom and a chandeliered bathroom? What’s it to you?

So what if Trump called the top election official in Georgia and pressured him to announce the discovery of just enough votes to reverse Biden’s victory in that state? “All I want to do is this: I just want to find 11,780 votes,” Trump said, in a conversation he cannot deny because it was recorded.

But so what if Trump lies constantly, blatantly, sometimes viciously, even when there is no dispute about the truth? So what if he continues to lie about Haitian immigrants in Ohio, falsely calling them “illegal” and falsely claiming they eat cats and dogs? So what if he lies about crime, about the economy, about kids supposedly having sex reassignment surgeries at their schools?

So what if Trump called the top election official in Georgia and pressured him to announce the discovery of just enough votes to reverse Biden’s victory in that state? “All I want to do is this: I just want to find 11,780 votes,” Trump said, in a conversation he cannot deny because it was recorded.

But, so what if Trump lies constantly, blatantly, sometimes viciously, even when there is no dispute about the truth? So what if he continues to lie about Haitian immigrants in Ohio, falsely calling them “illegal” and falsely claiming they eat cats and dogs? So what if he lies about crime, about the economy, about kids supposedly having sex reassignment surgeries at their schools?

Nothing matters to Trump except Trump❗ As easily as he forsakes truth and as easily as he could forsake Pence,💢 he would forsake the nation. That is the “so what” of this election, which Harris must win❗.

Eugene Robinson writes a column on politics and culture and hosts a weekly online chat with readers.

Media alert! Donald Trump must be accountable for crazy statements calling veterans "suckers" and "losers"

Bandy X. Lee, a forensic psychiatrist led a group of psychiatrists, psychologists and other specialists who questioned Trump’s mental fitness for office in a book that she edited called The Dangerous Case of Donald Trump: 27 Psychiatrists and Mental Health Experts Assess a President.

Echo opinion by Eugene Robinson published in the Washington Post:

It is irresponsible to wrongmindedly obsess over President Biden’s tendency to mangle a couple of words in a speech while Donald Trump is out there sounding detached from reality. Biden, who is old, at least makes sense. Trump, also old - 78 years old, rants like someone you’d cross the street to avoid.

We in the media failed by becoming inured to Trump’s verbal incontinence — not just the rapid-fire lies and revenge-seeking threats, but also the frightening glimpses into a mind that is, evidently, unwell. In 2016, Trump said outrageous things at his campaign rallies to be entertaining. 

In 2024, his tangents raise serious questions about his mental fitness.

His rally on Sunday in Las Vegas offered a grim smorgasbord of examples, but the obvious standout (and not in a good way) is the story he told about being aboard a hypothetical electric-powered boat. He posits that the battery would be so heavy that it would cause the craft to sink, and he relates his purported conversation with a knowledgeable mariner about this scenario. Bear with me, but it’s worth reading the passage in full:

Trumpzism rant:  “I say, ‘What would happen if the boat sank from its weight, and you’re in the boat, and you have this tremendously powerful battery, and the battery’s now underwater, and there’s a shark that’s approximately 10 yards over there?’ “By the way, a lot of shark attacks lately, do you notice that? Lot of sharks. I watched some guys justifying it today: ‘Well they weren’t really that angry, they bit off the young lady’s leg because of the fact that they were not hungry but they misunderstood who she was.’ These people are crazy. He said, ‘There’s no problem with sharks, they just didn’t really understand a young woman swimming.’ No, really got decimated, and other people, too, a lot of shark attacks.
“So I said, ‘There’s a shark 10 yards away from the boat, 10 yards, or here. Do I get electrocuted if the boat is sinking, water goes over the battery, the boat is sinking? Do I stay on top of the boat and get electrocuted, or do I jump over by the shark and not get electrocuted?’ Because I will tell you, he didn’t know the answer.
“He said, ‘You know, nobody’s ever asked me that question.’ I said, ‘I think it’s a good question. I think there’s a lot of electric current coming through that water.’ But you know what I’d do if there was a shark or you get electrocuted? I’ll take electrocution every single time. I’m not getting near the shark. So we’re going to end that, we’re going to end it for boats, we’re going to end it for trucks.”

Trucks? He’s actually talking about the transition to electric vehicles, which he has vowed to halt. That entire hallucination is part of Trump’s rationale for one of his major policy positions.

Trump told the electrocution-or-shark story at least once before, at a rally in Iowa last October. Stormy Daniels, the adult-film actress who received $130,000 in hush money to keep quiet about her sexual encounter with Trump — a payment that led to the former president’s conviction on 34 felony charges — has said that Trump is “obsessed with sharks, terrified of sharks.” Way back in 2013, he declared on Twitter: “Sharks are last on my list — other than perhaps the losers and haters of the World!”

The White House press corps would be in wolf pack mode if Biden were in the middle of a speech and suddenly veered into gibberish about boats and sharks. 

There would be front-page stories questioning whether the president, at 81, was suffering from dementia; and the op-ed pages would be filled with thumb-suckers about whether Vice President Harris and the Cabinet should invoke the 25th Amendment. 

House Republicans would already have scheduled hearings on Biden’s mental condition and demanded he take a cognitive test.

(IMO the Biden campaign team should demand for former guy Trump to havea venereal disease blood test!)

The tendency with Trump, at 78, is to say he’s “just being Trump.” But he’s like this all the time.

Also during the Las Vegas speech, Trump tried to deny the allegation by one of his White House chiefs of staff, retired Marine General John F. Kelly, that he refused in 2018, to visit an American military cemetery in France, saying it was filled with “suckers” and “losers.” Trump told the crowd on Sunday that “only a psycho or a crazy person or a very stupid person” would say such a thing while “I’m standing there with generals and military people in a cemetery.”

But he wasn’t “standing there” with anybody❗ He never went to the cemetery.😓

Add to the Trump lie library

Except in his delusional mind, perhaps, which is a much bigger problem than Biden fumbling a name or garbling a sentence.

Trump gives crazy speeches about mythical sharks and other bizarre statements

Echo opinion published in the Wisconsin State Journal in Madison

Trump is the candidate making crazy statements -- from Roger Brooks

Why, oh why,❓ I have repeatedly wondered, is so much being made in the mainstream media about President Joe Biden’s age and indications of minor lapses while, at the same time, little is said about former guy Donald Trump’s repeated crazy statements?

One recent example is when he mused about whether he would prefer being attacked by sharks* or being electrocuted in a sinking boat. Another is when he claimed that the feds are out to assassinate him.

Shark attack in Nevada? 🦈 Who knew?😩😧

When will we be given at least an equal indication of whether the presidential contenders are mentally, emotionally and temperamentally fit for the office?

Roger Brooks, Madison

Washington Post  Eugene Robinson Opinion: For thin-skinned Trump, every week is shark week: After saying something that made no earthly sense, and getting ridiculed for it, the former president couldn’t drop it.

* https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2024/06/24/trump-rally-sharks-media-electrocution/

Trump speaking in Nevada, "We can’t get the boat to float. The battery is so heavy. So then I start talking about asking questions. You know, I have an, I had an uncle who was a great professor at MIT for many years, long, I think the longest tenure ever. Very smart, had three different degrees and, you know, so I have an aptitude for things. You know, there is such a thing as an aptitude.
I said, ‘Well, what would happen if this boat is so heavy and started to sink and you're on the top of the boat. Do you get electrocuted or not?’ In other words, the boat is going down and you're on the top, will the electric currents flow through the water and wipe you out?'"

Donald Trump Bible study 101 "‘Do not turn to idols or make metal gods for yourselves"

Donald Trump could be making a big mistake hawking the “God Bless the USA” Bible to his cult MAGA supporters. Some of them might actually read it. Echo opinion published in The Washington Post by Eugene Robinson: Trump's sales pitch for Bibles will backfire🔥🎇❗

This latest grift might well flop, like Trump Steaks and those hideous gold-colored “Never Surrender” sneakers he’s trying to sell for $399. For its opportunistic timing alone — the rollout is happening during Holy Week, the most sacred time on the Christian calendar — the Bible venture deserves to be smitten by a wrathful marketplace.

If the MAGA faithful do buy those Bibles and look inside, however, they will find myriad reasons to forsake their profoundly flawed political hero.

They need only read as far as Exodus 20, in which Moses comes down from the mountain and pronounces the Ten Commandments. “Thou shalt not commit adultery” is an injunction Trump has bragged about habitually violating, as heard on the “Access Hollywood” tape. In that same recording, he also boasted about violating another commandment — “Thou shalt not covet thy neighbor’s wife” — by saying he “did try and f---” a married woman.

Trump is scheduled to be tried in a New York courtroom next month on felony charges that stem from a brief sexual liaison with adult-film star Stormy Daniels. At the same time, he is appealing an $83 million civil judgment against him for defaming writer E. Jean Carroll, whom he sexually abused in a department store dressing room, according to the court’s findings. I could go on and on.

“Thou shalt not bear false witness against thy neighbor” is yet another commandment Trump routinely ignores. 

Of the tens of thousands of documented lies he has told, many have been falsehoods about his real or perceived enemies. Just this week, he has been telling lies about the daughter of the judge who presides in his impending criminal trial — and who angered Trump by issuing a gag order prohibiting him from lying about witnesses, prosecutors, jurors and court staff.

Of course, the commandments are found in the Old Testament, where God’s judgments can be harsh and definitive. The New Testament tells us that we all are sinners — and that we all can be saved.

That is the theological basis on which Trump’s unlikeliest loyal followers — evangelical Christians and their pastors — justify looking past the way Trump scoffs at so many of the Bible’s instructions. Yes, he is far from perfect, they tell themselves; but like all of us, he can find salvation through Jesus Christ. As we give him our campaign contributions and our votes, we can also pray for his redemption.

Anyone who forks over $59.99 for a “God Bless the USA” Bible and reads it, however, will see that Jesus — whose resurrection Christians celebrate this weekend, on Easter Sunday — gave detailed instructions for believers to obey. They are encapsulated in the Sermon on the Mount as related in Matthew 5-7.

“Blessed are the meek: for they shall inherit the earth,” Jesus said. “… Blessed are the merciful: for they shall obtain mercy. Blessed are the pure in heart: for they shall see God. Blessed are the peacemakers: for they shall be called the children of God.”

In other words, that’s pretty much the diametrical opposite of the MAGA creed, which is more like: “Just win, baby.”

Later in the sermon, Jesus says, “Agree with thine adversary quickly, while thou art in the way with him; lest at any time the adversary deliver thee to the judge, and the judge deliver thee to the officer, and thou be cast into prison.” Had Trump followed this legal advice, he would be facing fewer criminal trials and civil fines.

On another occasion, described in Matthew 25:42-46, Jesus gives clear instructions about what a righteous immigration policy should be. “I was hungry and you gave me no food; I was thirsty and you gave me no drink; I was a stranger and you did not take me in, naked and you did not clothe me, sick and in prison and you did not visit me,” he says — and the dire consequence of behaving this way is to “go away into everlasting punishment.”

Evangelical voters — and their pastors, who presumably know in detail what the Bible says — have effectively suspended their belief in Jesus’ words. They cite Trump’s willingness to lead their crusade against abortion, although that is one issue Jesus never addressed.

Toward the end of the Sermon on the Mount, Jesus does give a warning that could not be more relevant as Trump seeks to regain power: “Beware of false prophets, which come to you in sheep’s clothing, but inwardly they are ravening wolves.”

Leviticus 19:4 Do not turn to idols or make metal gods for yourselves.

Donald Trump is a spoiled brat who is not suited to run for any office

Trump’s $83 million lawsuit loss: Letters to the Editor — January 30, 2024,  published in The New York Post

Trump didn’t like the closing argument in the Carroll case and he walked (like a spoiled brat*) out as counsel was addressing the jury.

He showed total disrespect for the judicial system which as a potential sitting president is unacceptable. Shame on him for undermining  the credibility of our courts.

Is that what he will do if a foreign leader says something he doesn’t like? Character counts and — much like all of his businesses — Trump is bankrupt in character.

Gary Kleinman in Los Angeles, California

*Alan Simpson isn't a big Donald Trump fan. In an interview with NBC News, Simpson called Trump, among other things, a “spoiled brat”.

**Donald Trump, spoiled brat in chief writes Eugene Robinson in The Washington Post

George Santos hides from truth but Republicans continue to ignore his lies

Echo opinion by columnist Eugene Robinson published in The Washington Post:  Calling for Republicans to do the right thing and expel George Santos from Congress.

The people of New York’s 3rd Congressional District thought they were sending to the House a successful Jewish businessman who had attended an elite prep school, starred on the volleyball team at Baruch College, earned a graduate degree at New York University, worked at Goldman Sachs and Citigroup, founded his own thriving asset-management firm, and served his community by running an animal-rescue charity.

Instead, they voters got none of the above.

Rather, they got Rep. George Santos (R), or “Anthony Devolder,” or “Anthony Zabrovsky,” or “Kitara Ravache.” Whoever he might be, he is not remotely the man those voters believed they were electing.

Here's a list of Rep. George Santos's trail of untruths*

Santos defrauded his constituents, morally if not legally, and effectively disenfranchised them. More of his fabrications are revealed almost daily. His presence in the House chamber, where so much history has taken place, defiles and dishonors the institution — yes, that is still possible — and he should be promptly expelled.

This is something that Republicans and Democrats should be able to agree on. Almost every member of Congress I’ve ever met, from either party, at some level understands holding elective office as a sacred trust. To accept a brazen charlatan such as Santos as a colleague is to mock the hallowed place they love to call the “People’s House.”

The excuse for doing nothing that Speaker Kevin McCarthy (R-Calif.) and Santos have offered — that the people of his district decided Santos should represent them, and their will is sovereign — holds no water. Those voters chose a fictional character, a figment of Santos’s fertile imagination. Their will was not honored, but instead thwarted, by his myriad lies.

If Santos had, say, claimed a college degree that he fell just short of earning, or exaggerated his athletic prowess or his business acumen, I would understand a decision to let voters render their verdict in 2024. He would hardly be the first member of Congress to burnish a résumé. But I am aware of no precedent in which a representative or senator forged an entire gleaming persona out of patent lies.

There is no shame in capping one’s formal education with a high school equivalency diploma; Abraham Lincoln, who served a term in the House, never went to college, either. But to then claim both undergraduate and graduate degrees is indeed shameful, and dishonest, and perhaps pathological.

And given where his district is, it was unforgivable for Santos to falsely claim on his campaign website that his mother “was in her office in the South Tower” of the World Trade Center at the moment of the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks. Santos said on Twitter that 9/11 “claimed my mother’s life.” He told voters that although she survived the attacks, she later died of cancer — implying that the illness was caused by toxic dust and debris from the towers’ collapse. There is no evidence that Santos’s mother worked at the World Trade Center on 9/11, and immigration records appear to show she was not even in the United States at the time.

In the parts of Queens and Long Island that Santos represents, many voters would have personally known office workers or firefighters who died on 9/11 or in the aftermath. For Santos to lie about having a personal connection to a tragedy so deeply felt by so many New Yorkers is cynical and sick.

I realize that calling for Santos to be expelled might sound quixotic. Yes, I know that Republicans have only a nine-seat House majority. I know McCarthy needed Santos’s vote to become speaker and will need his continuing support to keep that hard-won gavel. And I know there is a good chance that if Santos were tossed out, the seat might well go to a Democrat in a special election.

But even then, Republicans would still control the chamber. And McCarthy’s position is already precarious, since any member of the GOP caucus can force a vote on his ouster. 

Also, there is a practical question: How can McCarthy or anyone else in the House trust anything Santos ever says?

The House Ethics Committee is investigating Santos, but usually moves at the speed of molasses in winter. Local and federal prosecutors, meanwhile, are following the money — looking into Santos’s personal and campaign finances — and McCarthy might be waiting to see what those probes unearth before taking any action.

If so, that is a mistake. It is already beyond dispute that injury has been done to the people of New York’s 3rd District, who are denied the representative they voted for. As speaker, McCarthy has a binary choice: Either he moves against Santos in defense of the House’s integrity — or he proves that it has none.

*Education lies: High school 
During the 2020 campaign, Santos told a dramatic story about how Horace Mann Prep in the Bronx, a prestigious private school he said he attended, refused to help his financially struggling family before his graduation, forcing him to leave four months early.

College:  On a résumé he submitted to the Nassau County GOP, Santos wrote that he graduated from Baruch College in 2010, with a bachelor’s degree in economics and finance. Santos said he was an exceptional student, earning a 3.89 GPA, graduating summa cum laude and ranking in the top 1 percent of his class. Except, Santos never attended Baruch.

Chairman Joseph G. Cairo Jr. of the Nassau County Republican Committee, who this past week called for Santos to resign. Santos told him that he was a star on the Baruch volleyball team.  “[He] told me, I remember specifically, that he was into sports a little bit — that he was a star on the Baruch volleyball team and they had won the league championship,” Cairo said at a news conference, prompting some laughter. “What can I tell ya?

Graduate school: Santos said he received an MBA in international business from New York University in 2013, after scoring an impressive 710 on his GMAT exam. He never got a degree from NYU.

“I didn’t graduate from any institution of higher learning. I’m embarrassed and sorry for having embellished my résumé,” Santos said in an interview with the New York Post. “I own up to that. … We do stupid things in life.”

Religion:  In June 2020, Santos wrote on Twitter that he is the “grandson of Holocaust refugees.” Last month, Jewish Insider cast doubt on that claim, noting the dates Santos cited for his grandparents’ departure from Belgium to Brazil do not line up, nor do immigration records support his version of his family’s history.

In March, Santos said in a podcast interview that he was “raised Catholic, born to a Jewish family  ❓— very, very confusing religious background.” 

More recently, he told the New York Post: “I never claimed to be Jewish. I am Catholic. Because I learned my maternal family had a Jewish background I said I was ‘Jew-ish.’” 

Santos now says that he’s “clearly Catholic,” but he claims that his grandmother told stories about being Jewish and later converting to Catholicism.

Republicans can run from the January 6 report but they cannot hide from the result

Echo opinion by Eugene Robinson published in The Washington Post:

The January 6 report said of the attack on the Capitol: “The central cause was one man.”  Republicans can try to run from the January 6 committee report but they will never be able to hide the result.

Representatives Bennie G. Thompson (D-Mississippi) and Liz Cheney (R-Wyoming) have radically different political philosophies and life experiences. But, with Thompson as its leader and Cheney as his second-in-command, the House January 6 committee conducted one of the most impressive congressional investigations the nation has ever seen.

Rep. Thompson, 74, is a Black liberal Democrat from Mississippi who grew up during the civil rights movement and remembers how racist Jim Crow repression denied his father the right to vote. Rep. Cheney, 56, is a White conservative Republican from Wyoming,who grew up in the halls of power with her father serving as a member of Congress and as vice president.

January 6 Committee shines light on The Big Trumpzi Lie

Writes Thompson: “The Capitol’s shining dome, topped with the statue of goddess Freedom, was built partially by the labor of enslaved people in the 18th and 19th centuries. Dark chapters of America’s history are written into the building’s marble, sandstone, and mortar. And yet in the halls and chambers of this building, leaders of courage passed amendments to our Constitution and enacted the laws that banned slavery, guaranteed equal rights under the law, expanded the vote, promoted equality, and moved our country, and her people, forward.”

The responsibility of learning and telling the story of the  2021,  Capitol insurrection brought these partisan opponents together as chair and vice chair of the January 6 committee. Their separate forewords to the committee’s final report, released Thursday, tell what united these unlikely partners.

Writes Cheney: “In April 1861, when Abraham Lincoln issued the first call for volunteers for the Union Army, my great-great grandfather, Samuel Fletcher Cheney, joined the 21st Ohio Volunteer Infantry. He fought through all four years of the Civil War, from Chickamauga to Stones River to Atlanta. ... At the heart of our Republic is the guarantee of the peaceful transfer of power. Members of Congress are reminded of this every day as we pass through the Capitol Rotunda.”

Both Cheney and Thompson understand the building where they work as an embodiment of our democracy and its long, halting and at times bloody struggle toward a more perfect union. Both refer to the Civil War era, the nation’s second founding. And both lived through a day that involved a sacrilege unseen even in Lincoln’s time: insurrectionists parading the Confederate battle flag across that sacred Rotunda.

This is not to slight the committee’s other members: Reps. Zoe Lofgren (D-Calif.), Adam B. Schiff (D-Calif.), Pete Aguilar (D-Calif.), Stephanie Murphy (D-Fla.), Jamie B. Raskin (D-Md.), Elaine G. Luria (D-Va.) and Adam Kinzinger (R-Ill.). 

Indeed, all on the committee did something unnatural for any member of Congress and impossible for quite a few: they suppressed their egos to further a common cause.

The traditional format for hearings, in which each committee member gets five minutes to strut and preen, would have been like dosing the country’s water supply with Ambien. 

Each member had moments in the spotlight and brought perspective, experience and expertise that shaped the panel’s work. But each also sat through entire sessions without uttering a word. 

Republicans can run but they cannot hide!

And Kinzinger’s patriotism — like Cheney’s — cost him his House seat and halted a promising political career.

The essential dynamic of the hearings, however, was the one-two combination of Thompson and Cheney. Their opening and closing statements at each session did more than demonstrate the committee’s bipartisan bona fides. They established the themes of that day’s presentation and the panel’s overall findings.

Thompson painted the big picture — the threat to our democracy from a violent, marauding mob that overran the Capitol in an attempt to nullify the result of a valid presidential election. Cheney zeroed in on the man responsible, the man who summoned the insurrectionists, fired them up, sent them off and then for more than three hours refused to make any effort to quell their bloody rampage: Donald Trump.

Cheney’s final statements, especially, were like a prosecutor’s closing argument to the jury. She wasted few words on those who aided and abetted the assault — lawyers Rudy Giuliani, John Eastman and Sidney Powell; leaders of the Proud Boys and the Oath Keepers; elected officials including even fellow members of Congress. Her laser-like focus was on Trump, on what he did and failed to do, and on his unfitness for any public office, let alone the highest in the land.

The committee’s purpose was not to damage Trump’s political standing or spur the Justice Department to prosecute him, though I hope its work has those effects. The mission was to discover and reveal as much of the truth as possible about an unspeakable day and to find ways to ensure such a thing never happens again.

House Republicans will end the committee’s work, but never erase the indelible mark it has made. Thompson, Cheney and their colleagues did their duty. And they did it well.

Important and urgent work to protect American democracy- January 6th Investigation

Rep. Liz Cheney says Trump's offer to consider January 6 insurrectionist pardons shows 'he'd do it all again':  

"Trump uses language he knows caused the January 6th, violence; suggests he’d pardon the January 6th insurrectionist defendants, some of whom have been charged with seditious conspiracy; threatens prosecutors; and admits he was attempting to overturn the election,” Cheney tweeted. 'He’d do it all again if given the chance'.”

Opinion: If we are to save our democracy, there must be a reckoning for the January 6th insurrectiont attack!

Echo opinion by Eugene Robinson in The Washington Post.

On January 6, 2021, insurrection put American democracy on the brink of being usurped. 

We must never forget.

The first week of 2021, brought an unprecedented rupture in the democratic process that Americans have taken for granted since the election of John Adams in 1796.

A sitting president, Donald Trump, was trying desperately to remain in office despite his defeat in a free and fair election. He summoned a mob to Washington as an intimidating show of force, and that violent mob — whipped into a frenzy by Trump and his cronies — stormed the Capitol to prevent Congress from certifying Trump’s loss.

Much has happened since, both domestically and in foreign affairs. Now, as then, the biggest factor in most Americans’ day-to-day lives is the disruption caused by the coronavirus pandemic. And the leadership of the Republican Party dearly wants us to forget that the Jan. 6 insurrection ever took place.

But the nation cannot just “move on” from such an attack on our constitutional order. Not since 1814, when British soldiers marched into Washington, had the Capitol been overrun and pillaged. Not even during the Civil War was the orderly transfer of presidential power disrupted. Never had a defeated presidential candidate — much less a defeated incumbent who had sworn to defend the Constitution — refused to accept the result of an election.

We need to know everything that is knowable about these events. And those who inspired, organized and committed the insurrection need to be brought to justice.

President Biden and Vice President Harris delivered remarks to mark the anniversary of the failed putsch of the prior year, on January 6th.

J

Jacob Chansley screams (howls!) as he and other intruders maraud through the US Capitol on January 6, 2021.

House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) planned a series of events, beginning with prayer and a moment of silence in the House chamber, where so many of her colleagues sheltered in terror on Jan. 6 as a crush of thugs and zealots tried to smash their way inside.

And because Democrats are in charge of the White House and Congress, most Republicans will do their best to pretend that the commemoration is more about politics than nationhood.

Unfortunately, Trump is also expected to speak on January 6th, and he will surely repeat his lies and gibberish about the election somehow being “stolen” from him and his supporters. He and the GOP — his GOP, make no mistake — have been trying to make the insurrection into a partisan issue. Don’t let them.

The mob threatened to “hang” Trump’s vice president, Mike Pence, after Pence announced that he would do his constitutional duty and certify Biden’s electoral victory. The senators, House members, staff aides and other Capitol workers forced to flee for their lives or shelter in terror belonged to both parties. And if you surveyed the political beliefs of the scores of police officers who were clubbed, beaten, doused with bear spray and abused with racist slurs by the mob, I wager you’d find as many conservatives as progressives.

What happened last Jan. 6, 2021, was much bigger and more important than politics. And holding accountable the perpetrators of this attack on our democracy must take precedence over any political concerns. This is bigger than who wins the midterm elections or who runs for president in 2024. This project of reckoning is about the continuation of the American experiment.

Actually, there are three simultaneous accountability projects whose success the American people must demand.

The House select committee investigating the attack (appointed by Pelosi only after Republicans refused to form a proper blue-ribbon commission) appears to be doing an admirable job of collecting new information, including about Trump’s actions that day. The committee must not let stonewalling by Trump and his inner circle cause delay — a full year has already passed. It is good that the committee plans to issue an interim report this summer but, in the meantime, it should hold public hearings and release as much information as possible. Their work is not just important but also urgent.

Simultaneously, Congress as a whole must shore up the weaknesses in our transfer-of-power process exposed by the insurrection. The mob’s aim was to halt the official counting of electoral votes — and the mob succeeded, at least for several hours. 

Even the libertarian Cato Institute agrees that the 1876, Electoral Count Act is “a mess of ambiguities and contradictions” and needs to be reformed. Legislation to do so should begin making its way toward Biden’s desk.

Meanwhile, the Justice Department must continue to press criminal charges against the insurrectionists. It is not enough to prosecute and sentence those who participated bodily in the assault. The puppet masters who assembled the crowd and sent it off to sack the Capitol must be held to account as well.

And no one, including #TFG Trump, can be considered above the law.

President Biden identifies "the former president is a defeated president"

Biden’s Jan. 6 speech sets the stage for a battle for truth and democracy: echo opinions*!

HELLO? For the past year, since he was elected in 2019, to be president in 2020, President Biden has tried to be his old, bipartisan, “we can all get along” self.

President Biden ignored his authoritarian predecessor and the lies he continued to spread about the 2020, election. He went out of his way to construct an infrastructure bill that could draw Republican support and hoped to accomplish more in partnership with the opposition. 

Moreover, President Biden desperately wanted the country and Washington DC, to return to being what they were when he was first elected to the Senate, in 1972.

But, finally, all that changed on January 6, 2022:

It has always been clear, but not always clearly stated, that the person responsible for the deadly insurrection at the U.S. Capitol last January 6, was Donald Trump. In his January 6 speech on Thursday, President Biden called Trump out — without once mentioning his name.

Speaking in the Capitol’s historic Statuary Hall, on the first anniversary of the failed coup attempt, Biden minced no words about the man he beat in the 2020 election. “He can’t accept he lost,” Biden said. “He’s not just the former president, he’s the defeated former president. … You can’t love your country only when you win.”

There were no new revelations from Biden and Vice President Harris about the shockingly violent events we all witnessed a year ago. But I did think I was hearing a new tone from an administration that, until now, has tried to look ahead rather than behind and has avoided re-litigating the Trump years. “I did not seek this fight,” Biden said. “But I will not shrink from it either.”

By “this fight,” Biden meant the effort to repair and reinforce our democracy after the brutalization it suffered under Trumpism. But I had to wonder whether the speech might someday be remembered as the opening salvo of a 2024 Biden-Trump rematch.

The quick response Thursday from the defeated former president suggested that Biden’s words had gotten under his skin. In a statement, Trump falsely claimed that Biden “used my name today to try to further divide America.” Since Trump’s lies often map his fears and obsessions, it sounds to me as if it might unnerve him that Biden didn’t say his name at all.

Harris, in her own remarks, set the context for Biden’s speech by putting the Jan. 6, 2021, insurrection on par with two other dates that “echo throughout history” — the Dec. 7, 1941, Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor; and the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks at the World Trade Center and the Pentagon. The Capitol riot showed “what our nation would look like if the forces that seek to dismantle our democracy are successful,” she said.

The logical inference is that, like the attack on Pearl Harbor and 9/11, the insurrection sent us into a war. “We are in a battle for the soul of America,” Biden said. This time, though, the enemy is not foreign but domestic. And that enemy of our democracy has a name, even if Biden declined to let it cross his lips.

In brief remarks to reporters after the speech, Biden said that to heal, “you have to recognize the extent of the wound.” 

Last year, in the hours after the insurrection, even some of Trump’s closest political allies saw those wounds clearly and were outraged. Sen. Lindsey O. Graham (R-S.C.) said that he was finished with Trump once and for all. Then-Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) put the blame squarely on Trump. 

House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy (R-Calif.), who had pleaded with Trump to tell the rioters to go home, said Trump was responsible for the insurrection.

What a difference a year makes. On Thursday, Graham attacked Biden — not Trump — for what he called “brazen politicization” of the anniversary. McConnell, too, accused “some Washington Democrats” of trying to “exploit this anniversary.” And McCarthy, like almost all of his fellow Republicans in Congress, was conspicuously absent from the day’s events commemorating the worst assault on the Capitol since British troops burned the building in 1814.

Biden asked, “Are we going to be a nation that lives not by the light of the truth but in the shadow of lies?” The fact that this question had to be raised at all shows what the president is up against: To survive in today’s Republican Party, officials and candidates cannot afford to anger Trump; and to avoid Trump’s wrath, they cannot forcefully reject his lies about the election purportedly having been “stolen.”

President Biden spent much of his speech refuting those lies with facts and logic. I hope he returns to the subject regularly in the weeks and months to come. Largely ignoring Trump hasn’t weakened his hold on the GOP. The defeated former president must be treated like any other bully: You have to stand up to him.

Trump and his allies will continue to claim that telling the truth about Jan. 6 is some kind of partisan political ploy. It is not. More than 140 police officers were injured in the melee. 

Several officers later died. An insurrectionist was shot as the mob breached the Capitol. The nation was traumatized. And none of this would have happened if Trump had not illegally tried to cling to power by overturning the will of 81 million voters.


Biden has to lead the fight for truth and democracy. 

Losing is not an option.

* Opinion by Eugene Robinson, who writes a twice-a-week column on politics and culture.

Save American democracy: Get to the bottom of what happened on January 6th 2021

Opinion echo: If we are to save our democracy, there must be a reckoning for the January. 6 attack

By Eugene Robinson 

One year ago, ours was a nation on the brink. We must never forget!

The first week of 2021, brought an unprecedented rupture in the democratic process that Americans have taken for granted since the election of John Adams in 1796. A sitting president, Donald Trump, was trying desperately to remain in office despite his defeat in a free and fair election. He summoned a mob to Washington as an intimidating show of force, and that violent mob — whipped into a frenzy by Trump and his cronies — stormed the Capitol to prevent Congress from certifying Trump’s loss.

Much has happened since, both domestically and in foreign affairs. Now, as then, the biggest factor in most Americans’ day-to-day lives is the disruption caused by the coronavirus pandemic. And the leadership of the Republican Party dearly wants us to forget that the Jan. 6 insurrection ever took place.

But the nation cannot just “move on” from such an attack on our constitutional order. Not since 1814, when British soldiers marched into Washington, had the Capitol been overrun and pillaged. Not even during the Civil War was the orderly transfer of presidential power disrupted. Never had a defeated presidential candidate — much less a defeated incumbent who had sworn to defend the Constitution — refused to accept the result of an election.

We need to know everything that is knowable about these events. And those who inspired, organized and committed the insurrection need to be brought to justice.

President Biden and Vice President Harris intend to deliver remarks Thursday to mark the anniversary of the failed putsch. House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) has planned a series of events, beginning with prayer and a moment of silence in the House chamber, where so many of her colleagues sheltered in terror on Jan. 6 as a crush of thugs and zealots tried to smash their way inside.

And because Democrats are in charge of the White House and Congress, most Republicans will do their best to pretend that the commemoration is more about politics than nationhood. Trump is also expected to speak Thursday, and he will surely repeat his lies and gibberish about the election somehow being “stolen” from him and his supporters. He and the GOP — his GOP, make no mistake — have been trying to make the insurrection into a partisan issue. 

Don’t let them do that!

Noose appears near Capitol; protesters seen carrying Confederate flags:  A noose was erected on the West Front of the U.S. Capitol Wednesday afternoon, attached to a wooden beam.

The mob threatened to “hang” Trump’s vice president, Mike Pence, after Pence announced that he would do his constitutional duty and certify Biden’s electoral victory. The senators, House members, staff aides and other Capitol workers forced to flee for their lives or shelter in terror belonged to both parties. And if you surveyed the political beliefs of the scores of police officers who were clubbed, beaten, doused with bear spray and abused with racist slurs by the mob, I wager you’d find as many conservatives as progressives.

What happened last January 6 was much bigger and more important than politics. And holding accountable the perpetrators of this attack on our democracy must take precedence over any political concerns. This is bigger than who wins the midterm elections or who runs for president in 2024. This project of reckoning is about the continuation of the American experiment.

Jacob Chansley, the spear-carrying January 6th rioter, whose horned fur hat, bare chest and face paint made him one of the more recognizable figures in the assault on the Capitol, was sentenced Wednesday to 41 months in prison.

Actually, there are three simultaneous accountability projects whose success the American people must demand.

The House select committee investigating the attack (appointed by Pelosi only after Republicans refused to form a proper blue-ribbon commission) appears to be doing an admirable job of collecting new information, including about Trump’s actions that day. The committee must not let stonewalling by Trump and his inner circle cause delay — a full year has already passed. It is good that the committee plans to issue an interim report this summer but, in the meantime, it should hold public hearings and release as much information as possible. Their work is not just important but also urgent.

Simultaneously, Congress as a whole must shore up the weaknesses in our transfer-of-power process exposed by the insurrection. The mob’s aim was to halt the official counting of electoral votes — and the mob succeeded, at least for several hours. Even the libertarian Cato Institute agrees that the 1876, Electoral Count Act is “a mess of ambiguities and contradictions” and needs to be reformed. Legislation to do so should begin making its way toward Biden’s desk.

Meanwhile, the Justice Department must continue to press criminal charges against the insurrectionists. It is not enough to prosecute and sentence those who participated bodily in the assault. The puppet masters who assembled the crowd and sent it off to sack the Capitol must be held to account as well.

And no one, including Trump, can be considered above the law.

Donald Trump and his freaky ally Rep. Matt Gaetz

Echo opinion published in the Herald-Dispatch in Huntington, West Virginia - Trump tries to scare up a win

WASHINGTON, D.C. — As Donald Trump frantically tries to frighten voters with the fake specter of “anarchists” and “looters” and planes full of black-clad “bad people” coming to menace your suburban neighborhood, take a trip down memory lane. 

Florida Rep. Matt Gaetz- R, reminds me of Frankenstein with a face lift! His right wing personality is bizarre.

Recall those desperate days of 2018, when the nation was sacked, pillaged and reduced to smoking ruins by vast, unstoppable caravans of marauding Latino migrants.

Except the invasion never arrived; the invading force, as Trump depicted it, never even existed. Which is my point.

This is not the first time Trump tried to manufacture fear and loathing to swing an election in his favor. Two years ago, it didn’t work. Democrats seized control of the House, flipping 40 seats and transforming Rep. Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif., from minority leader into speaker.

That doesn’t mean the ploy is certain to fail now: Americans are under great strain from the COVID-19 pandemic and the economic consequences of suppressing it. But 2018 does provide some context for Trump’s decision to use the continuing protests for racial justice as a wedge issue, abandoning any pretense of trying to promote understanding or heal long-festering wounds. Anyone who thinks this strategy is a guaranteed winner for Trump is simply wrong.

Trump’s rhetoric in September and October of 2018 was as apocalyptic as his fantasies are now. Aided by the right-wing-media machine, the president seized on a long-standing phenomenon — groups of Central American asylum seekers banding together in groups to safely make the dangerous trek through Mexico to the U.S. border — and portrayed it as an acute threat.

There were “some very bad people” in the caravans, Trump warned. “Go into the middle of the caravan, take your camera and search,” he dared a reporter. “You’re going to find MS-13,” referring to the notorious street gang, “you’re going to find Middle Eastern, you’re going to find everything.”

Fox News sent reporters deep into Mexico to breathlessly chart the progress of one caravan that was nearly 1,000 miles from the border. Rep. Matt Gaetz, R-Fla., who can be even Trumpier than Trump, tweeted an unverified video of a man handing cash to would-be migrants in Honduras and suggested, falsely, that financier George Soros might somehow be behind the payments. (OMG!!!! Rep. Gaetz is an evil creature! He looks like Frankenstein with a face lift.)

Rep. Matt Gaetz, R- Fl 01,  looks like Frankenstein with a face lift, JMO. He's a freaky Trump ally.

Barring Latin American migrants at the border was seen as Trump’s most reliable issue, his sweet spot. He and the GOP demagogued the daylights out of the caravans in an attempt to hold on to the House — and failed miserably. Outside of the party’s hardcore base, voters just didn’t respond.

Trump’s ploy failed at a time when the economy was rapidly growing, unemployment was steadily falling and Republicans were triumphally touting the massive tax cuts they had rammed through. Today, the political landscape is bleak and daunting — not just for Trump, but for many Americans.

There are two obvious differences between 2018 and 2020 (beyond the wild-card logistics of holding a national election in the middle of a pandemic). One is that Trump himself is on the ballot this year. That will surely bring out some true believers who sat out the midterms but also more Democrats determined to make Trump a one-term president. The other difference is that the issue Trump has seized on is race — a cleavage so fundamental and incendiary since the nation’s founding that it led to the Civil War.

Trump has chosen not just to decry violence and property damage, which Joe Biden and the Democratic Party also denounce, but to deny that systemic racism exists — even in policing, even in the killing of George Floyd and the shooting of Jacob Blake and all the other victims whose names are emblazoned on Black Lives Matter banners and T-shirts.

Trump is right that ranting about race and violence is probably better for him than talking about his dismal failure on the COVID-19 pandemic. But there is a very good chance it won’t be enough. Those caravans never arrived, and neither did Trump’s midterm victory.

Eugene Robinson is a syndicated columnist.